Day 81: Chuck Turns 29

December 30, 2019

Kilometers: 1944.1-1967.5

Alpine Lodge in St Arnaud to John Tait Hut

As we always do when we are leaving a town for a few days we took our time this morning. I had to buy another phone charging cord from the general store, we had to eat Charlie’s cake because we were too full from bbq to eat it last night and we had to fully charge all our devices. 

We started walking towards Lake Rotoiti around 8:45. The lake is very close to the St Arnaud village and is very beautiful, located right in between two huge mountains. We took a second to admire it before starting the hike. 

The first nine kms of the hike were along the east side of the lake to Lakehead Hut. We got occasional views of the lake as we made our way on the wide and well maintained path. 

We arrived at Lakehead Hut around 11 and decided to eat lunch there. With not too much further to go over easy terrain I decided to make two packs of ramen noodles for lunch. It’s the first time I’ve cooked for lunch this trip, maybe I’ll start doing it a bit more. 

From the hut we had less than 14kms to get to the the hut we’d be staying at for the night. This whole section was in a valley following the Travers River upstream towards the mountains. It was easy walking with not much change in elevation. For the last few kms we had some views of Travers Mountain, it’s peak covered with snow. Tomorrow we will be going over the saddle of that mountain.

I arrived at the hut just after 3 and the others were not far behind me. We all bathed in the river and then played some cards. We played Rikiki or “Elevators” in English and I won. We have been playing it a lot with bigger groups recently. We snacked on the rest of the birthday cake as we played. 

For dinner I made a freeze dried meal of venison stir fry with peppers and green beans over rice noodles. It was pretty good for freeze dried food. Charlie’s dinner of rice with tikki masala sauce didn’t live up to his usual quality of birthday dinner he’s had in the past. 

We were all listening to music, reading or playing on our phones quietly for the rest of the night. Two more hikers got into the hut late, one was a fellow American from Chicago.